Stay on target

Erectile dysfunction affects more than three million people per year in the United States alone. The Cleveland Clinic says that over half of all men will experience it in their lifetime, especially as they age. There are a number of other conditions that can contribute to it as well: heart disease and diabetes can cause glucose to build up and damage the blood vessels that allow the penis to become erect. Obesity can hamper blood flow. Opiate-based painkillers and hormones in food can dampen testosterone. And anxiety – something that many modern humans struggle with – can psychologically hamper arousal. There are all kinds of forces out there conspiring against your penis.

Erectile dysfunction diagnoses are increasing every year. That’s probably at least partially attributable to more men being unafraid to talk to their doctor about the situation down there, but it’s also likely that our way of living is making us less sexually viable. But medical science is working hard (no pun intended) on the problem because if we’re ever going to leave this planet, we need to solve the issue of zero-gravity boners.

The human body’s adaptation to a low-gravity environment is cause for concern. NASA has already discovered a bunch of stuff that happens when we’re in space for too long. Without the pull of the Earth to provide tension, bones, and muscles weaken. Astronauts engage in vigorous exercise for two to three hours a day while off-planet to try and offset some of this. But that’s just the most obvious symptom. Your heart also works less, reducing the production of red blood cells and causing “space anemia.” Pressure changes in the brain and spinal fluid hamper vision. Outer space is hard on the body, and it’s extra hard on hard-ons.

When you get an erection, the brain sends messages of arousal to the corpora cavernosa, the spongy tissue filled with blood vessels inside the penis. Normally these are constricted, but when you get randy they relax and loosen up, paradoxically getting harder as they fill up with blood. That blood is pumped through the body, but it gets a big assist from gravity. On Earth, humans carry much of their blood in the lower half of their body, but in space it redistributes up top more (which is why many astronauts appear red and puffy-faced).

When you combine the reduced blood flow from microgravity with the above, you get a penis that just isn’t getting the necessary juice to sustain an erection. Sure, drugs like Viagra will work the same in space as they do on Earth, but it’s up in the air as to the kind of dosage astronauts would need. The general scientific consensus on getting hard in orbit is that it’s certainly possible, just a lot more difficult.

It’s also tough from a hormonal level. Testosterone is one of the most important chemical messengers in the male body, but NASA has measured T levels that decrease when astronauts are in space. They return to normal when they return to Earth, but it’s very possible that just being up there would naturally make you less horny.

Even if you do manage to get an erection in space, there’s still the question on what to do with it. NASA has never had two astronauts knock boots in orbit before. They certainly had the opportunity – in 1991, we sent newlyweds Mark Lee and Jan Davis into space – but it just wasn’t in the cards. NASA has a very strict policy about hanky-panky on work time. Intercourse in microgravity brings with it a whole host of problems, though. On Earth, gravity is enough to keep you in one place no matter how enthusiastically you thrust. But when that fundamental force is removed, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, so you’re likely to go flying away from your partner at high speeds. Think about trying to have sex on ice skates while standing up.

Sex in space would require both parties to be tethered down to immobile objects, drastically reducing the potential for personal injury while also making position changing well-nigh impossible. Either that or a third party might be necessary as a sort of “guide” to keep things going. That’s a whole new area of kink we’re not comfortable exploring.

Even grosser is the sweat situation. In zero gravity, sweat doesn’t fall from your body and evaporate like it does on Earth. Instead, it sticks to you like a film, growing thicker and thicker with exercise. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a pretty serious turn-off.

Finally, all the arousal issues that apply to men would also affect women – they receive a rush of blood to the genitals when they get ready to make love, and secrete lubricating fluid to make it possible. However, without gravity to distribute that fluid along the vagina, it would pool up at the base of it, leaving the rest of the organ ill-suited to do the do.

Some private citizens are trying to investigate this issue further. In 2015, online smut portal Pornhub launched a crowdfunding campaign for “Sexploration,” which would have sent a pair of adult film stars into orbit to see what they could accomplish up there. Unfortunately for science, they didn’t meet their fundraising goal, and the project was scrapped.

No less an authority than Neil DeGrasse Tyson has weighed in on the subject for National Geographic. His prognosis is about as grim as ours, unfortunately.

So what’s the solution to this sticky problem? Obviously, the most logical one is simulated gravity, either through rotating a space station or other methods. The human body evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in the gentle grip of Earth’s gravity, so it’s pretty silly to think we can skip out on it without consequences.

It’s possible that the advent of virtual reality will allow us to have completely mediated sexual experiences without the need for all that sticky biology. Or some technology that hasn’t even been dreamed of, like an orgasm in a pill. Who knows – the future could certainly bring with it men specifically designed to pop a stiffy in zero G, but until then we’re just going to have to do it the hard way.